Diary of an Assassin (7 page)

CHAPTER
16

Vanessa Hailstorm had been to Paris three times in her life and each time she was in and out so fast she hardly had the chance to grab a meal at a restaurant. Her French was decent, though, having been worked on in the quiet town of Matane, Quebec, one of her favorite vacation spots.

A driver
waited for her in a small European car and she slipped into the backseat without a word. They began to drive.

“Do you wish to stop and eat somewhere first, mademoiselle?”

“No, just straight to the prison please.”

The neighborhoods were
bustling and pleasant to look at but the weather always seemed gray. It was the same each time she visited. The weather, to her, was the most important part of a city and she couldn’t imagine moving here as many young women her age dreamed of doing.

The
La Santé prison was the most famous in all of France and had housed many infamous criminals and terrorists, including Guillaume Apollinaire, the poet and playwright who was suspected of aiding in the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.

The exterior of the prison was intimidating but not entirely unpleasant and nothing compared to the dilapidated interior where multiple inmates were crowded into cells designed for only one. Vanessa stared at the exterior gate a while and then exhaled
. “Wait for me here.”

She entered through
the gates and showed her credentials, which identified her as a mid-level bureaucrat with the United States Department of Homeland Security. She cleared several other gates and was amazed how anachronistic the prison was. It could have been transported back two hundred years and no one would have been able to tell the difference.

She was escorted to a small room with a table and several chairs. As she sat and checked her e
mails, the noise of the prison jangled all around her. It was far louder than one would expect and she wondered how people slept through it.

Before long a metal door opened across the room
. Two guards stepped through, a chained prisoner between them. He had some sort of contraption around his mouth and nose to prevent him from spitting. It was leather and metal and made him look deformed.

The man was sat in front of her
before the two guards took their spots on the wall behind him.

“Vous pouvez partir maintenant,” she said.
The guards looked to each other, and then left through the door they had come in from.

“Préférez-vous anglais ou français?”

“I like English,” the man hissed. At first Vanessa thought he did it on purpose but could see now that the leather strap covered only half his mouth, making it sound as if he dragged the last letters of his words out.

“Why do you like English?”

“It has four hundred thousand live words and seven hundred thousand dead ones. It is the only language whose dead words outnumber its live ones. It is constantly adapting.”

“Is that
what you do?” she said. “Adapt?”

“There is nothing else.”

She exhaled and pulled out a cigarette from her purse, lighting it. She took one puff and then leaned over, placing the butt into the man’s lips.

“I have your real name as Gustav Pierre Fabrice. Is that correct?”

“Very good. You are not from Homeland Security, are you?”

“No. Do you know who I’m with?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the work we do?”

“I worked for your predecessors, long ago.”

“I’m here to make you a
one-time offer.” She leaned in close. “One time. Right now.”

“I’m all ears,” he said, attempting
to grin but unable to do so.

“I already
know you worked for us once. Well, a subsidiary of ours. I read your file. It’s impressive.”

“We must go with our strengths.”

“Here’s my concern: you’ve been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. If I were to secure your release, I’m afraid the outcome would be unpredictable.”

“You have people killed for money and I’m the one who’s crazy?”

“I’m serious, Mr. Fabrice.”

“So am I. You can’t be sane and be in this business. But your concerns are unfounded. I am currently taking
Aripiprazole. It gives me clarity.”

“Okay, assuming you’re going to stay on your medication, I have another concern: your last mark.”

“What about him?”

“He was on a bus and you
set off explosives near the back of the bus. There were no survivors. Our agency is a scalpel, not a hammer.”

“I understand. That particular
client had asked for a public display, so I gave them a public display.”

“Who was the client?”

“The PLO. They pay well and have many contracts. Perhaps it’s a resource you have not tapped as yet.”

“We’re not terrorists. What we do, we do for our country.”

He shrugged. “As they say, if you say so.”

She leaned back in her seat, considering him. “This is a big risk on our part. I don’t know if you’re worth it.”

“May I ask a question now, mademoiselle? Exactly how did you find me?”

She pulled out a photo and slid it on the table: it was of
Isaac Rhett. “I spoke with our agents. I asked them who they thought the best in their field was. Number two, was him,” she said, tapping the photo. “Number one, was you.”

“I’m flattered.” He looked to the photo. “Is this the mark?”

“Yes. And a woman.”

“My standard fee is one
million per mark.”

“Considering we’re getting you out of a life sentence, your standard fee is now one hundred thousand per mark.”

He exhaled and swore in French. “I don’t work for pennies.”

“Very well,” she said, taking the photo and putting it back in her purse. “It’s been…interesting meeting you. Have a good life.” She stood.

“Wait…” He swore again. “I will do it.”

She sat back down. “If you do not
, and you flee, I promise you we will make the bounty on your head so high the penguins in Antarctica will be trying to kill you.”

He laughed. “That’s cute. Now
, I need ten men, reliable men, and several military-grade items that I assume will not be difficult for you to procure. I will also need a credit line, two passports, and photo identifications, as well as—”

“Hold on, stop. I’ll send someone to pick you up when you’re released. You can give them a list.”

He bowed his head. As Vanessa walked out, he said, “Mademoiselle, I appreciate your trust.”

“I don’t trust you. But I need you. Just do your job and we won’t have any problems.”

CHAPTER
17

Rhett sat across the street from the police
precinct at a café and sipped cappuccino. Stephanie and her friend had run down several blocks before they happened to find a policeman stopped at an intersection. The officer had taken them in. The man that had been chasing them wasn’t anywhere to be found and Rhett would glance into all the windows of the surrounding buildings every few minutes.

It was soon late in the afternoon
when Rhett ordered lunch. The waitress was pleasant and didn’t say anything about the fact that he had sat there for several hours. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure she’d noticed. It was amazing how little people noted about their surroundings.

Rhett saw two men pull up to the precinct. FBI. He could always tell because they tended to dress similar
ly: a ridiculous stay over from the days of J. Edgar Hoover, who insisted they wear white shirts and black suits no matter what they were doing.

The feds being involved complicated things. They would secure Stephanie away, probably in some safe-house in a nearby state
, and he would have to get to her before Starlight could send someone in: they had the ability to forge any credential. If Stephanie were his mark, he would simply be given FBI identification—or any ID that would get him into the house—and he would give Stephanie an injection of potassium, which would mimic cardiac arrest.

Rhett paid for his lunch and went across the street. He took a small
tracking device called a Spider—so named because of its eight small attachment hooks—and placed it on the rear bumper of the feds’ car. He then went to his own car, something he rented from Enterprise, and turned on the radio as he waited for them to come out.

Shortly after the feds had arrived, the two men were escorting Stephanie out of the precinct and to their car. Rhett
followed them as they pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

Driving cautiously,
Rhett could see that they were using basic tailing maneuvers. Nothing he couldn’t handle. He just rotated back and forth between several cars and stayed out of view of the rearview mirror.

The car eventually stopped at a hotel and one of
the men went in. He came back out and nodded to the other man, who helped Stephanie from the car. Rhett thought it unusual that they would take her to a hotel rather than directly to the airport. He wondered why…

“Shit,” he said under his breath.

He jumped out of the car and ran around to the back of the hotel. A service door was propped open with a garbage can and he could hear the cooks shouting in Spanish. He slipped inside.

The kitchen was hot and the cooks looked at him like he was crazy. He simply acted like he needed to be there and said hello to them before walking into the restaurant and then
through to the hotel lobby. An elevator dinged down the hall as Stephanie and the men stepped on.

He ran over and watched the small red numbe
r above the elevator stop on four. He rushed to the stairs, taking them two at a time. When he got to the fourth floor, he pulled out his .22 and stepped into the hall. Around the corner, a door slammed shut and locked. He ran over and stopped to listen. Unable to hear anything, he went from door to door, placing his ear on the wood.

He heard a groan from one door
, and he leaned back, slamming his heal just underneath the doorknob. The door splintered and crashed open. Rhett stepped in gun first. He realized he was pointing it at a nude elderly couple beneath the covers and looked away.

“Sorry, I’m really sorry.”

A scream came from down the hall.

Rhett sprinted out
then stopped and listened. A woman was shouting something. It was muffled, like someone was trying to keep her quiet. He ran to the room and kicked the door down, rolling over the carpet and coming up on one knee.

Stephanie was tied to the bed, one of the men standing over her
binding a gag over her mouth. Rhett let loose two shots, hitting him just above the eyebrow, and the man toppled over onto the carpet.

Another
man stepped out of the bathroom. Their eyes locked. He dove back into the bathroom as Rhett fired three rounds and leapt behind the wall, his back pressed against it. A mirror in front of Rhett allowed him a view into the bathroom. The light was off and he couldn’t tell where the man was.

“You can leave,”
Rhett shouted. “I don’t want to take your life. Just come out with your hands behind your head and get down on the floor. I promise you won’t be hurt.”

Silence. Rhett slowly stood, the gun up by his chin. He glanced around the corner and began to make his way out.

The man jumped out of the bathroom with a modified Tec-9 in his hands. Rhett jumped behind the bed as the shots rang out, tearing away bits of plaster and wood from the walls, exploding the television and one of the windows.

Rhett aimed underneath the bed and fired, hitting th
e man’s ankle. Rhett jumped onto the bed before landing on the man’s back.

The man flipped him off
himself and came up with a small, claw-shaped blade in his hand. He swung at Rhett’s face, slicing his cheek, before coming in with a downward blow aimed at his eye. Rhett stepped out of the way and grabbed the man’s wrist. He spun him around using his own weight against him and slammed him headfirst into the wall, leaving a hole.

The man spun and blindly swiped at th
e air. Rhett elbow locked him as he put his other hand on the back of his neck and bent him low. He began to knee the man in the groin. When the man shifted his groin out of the way, Rhett bent him down farther and kneed his chest and then his face, knocking out several teeth.

The man, blood pouring down his chin,
charged for Rhett’s eyes with his free hand. Rhett grabbed his fingers and twisted them upside down and back toward the wrist. He snapped three of them. The man screamed and Rhett pulled the blade from his other hand and stuck it into his throat.

The man fell to his knees, blood
raining out of him and over the carpets. The claw was meant to enter and then, because of small reversed hooks, only be pulled out when it could take flesh with it. Rhett ripped it out of his throat and made the wound bigger. The man toppled over, a choking, wet mess and Rhett turned away from him and untied Stephanie.

“We need to go, now.”